This week's Feature Article is on the brilliant Calvin and Hobbes strip, and some of its resultant merchandising troubles. Its creator, Bill Watterson, is a notorious recluse – the J. D. Salinger of comic strips. (Though Calvin and Hobbes is a lot better than Catcher in the Rye.)

I don't get into it in the article (aside from one throwaway line), but it's interesting to compare Calvin and Hobbes with its contemporary Garfield, which, already not in the same class artistically, totally went the merchandising-sell-out route. Even the idea of a Garfield CGI movie puts me off my lunch.

Of the time (1980s-1990s), I think only Gary Larson's The Far Side comes close to Calvin and Hobbes, and Larson also had the good sense to quit while he was ahead.

Came across a nifty typographic source yesterday, the Daily Drop Cap blog (via Harper's). You can use and download initial capitals for giving blog posts a little extra kick.

It's also a great place to see lorem ipsum placeholder text at work – nonsensical text based on a section of Cicero. From a distance, the text block looks like English, but since there are no real words, the meaning of text doesn't distract from how it looks on the page.

This week's Feature Article is on The Fantasy Art of Charles Vess. In addition to being a sought-after fantasy artist, Vess is a noted comics illustrator (in the fantasy genre, for the most part – though he did a little Spider-Man back in the '80s). He's won World Fantasy Awards for his Neil Gaiman collaborations (Sandman and Stardust), and his latest Eisner Award was for Jeff Smith's Rose.

Charles Vess fans should check out Drawing Down the Moon: The Art of Charles Vess, the upcoming retrospective from Dark Horse Comics. Dark Horse is releasing Drawing Down the Moon on December 23, 2009 – yes, just in time for Christmas. But you can preview the book before its release at the Dark Horse Comics website, just to make sure it's perfect for the fantasy art fans on your Christmas list before it's too late to find a different gift.

Those who only know of The Spirit through the 2007 Frank Miller movie should definitely read up on the real thing. (Though I didn't find Miller's adaptation as bad as everyone said – it just felt way more like Sin City than anything Eisner ever did, with the good humor of the original characters replaced with Miller-esque ultra-violence.)

I'm usually not a huge fan of comics spun-off from big sci-fi franchises, whether they're "non-canon" or part of an official "expanded universe." The writing and art tends to be sub-par. But the folks at IDW have been cranking out some pretty good Star Trek limited series lately, and I've been following a few:

First, there's John Byrne's Romulans: Schism, picking up some story threads from previous Star Trek comics by Byrne. The Klingon-Romulan Alliance continues, with all its back-stabbing and subterfuge, and Byrne even manages to work the ever-anonymous Number One into the action (she's a Commodore now).

Spock Reflections, written by Scott and David Tipton, is a great flashbacky trip through the highs and lows of Spock's life, with a lot of well-realized moments. Trekkies will appreciate the nuances, though those with only a casual familiarity with Spock's long Trek history might find the story a bit slow. The art, by David Messina, Federica Manfredi, Arianna Florean, and Ilaria Traversi, is also quite good.

Finally, Star Trek: Nero tries to flesh out the motivations of Trek's latest space loon. I thought Eric Bana's character in Star Trek was badly underwritten, and Star Trek's writers, Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, weren't able to get all the stuff into the movie which perhaps they should have. They do get story credit on the Nero script by Mike Johnson and Tim Jones, which explains where Nero comes from a little more convincingly. More solid art by David Messina, with coloring by Giovanna Niro (no relation).

On an unrelated note, check out my review of Wii Fit Plus – just picked it up the other day, and it's lots of fun.

The latest comics feature article: What are Digital Comics? Title's pretty self-explanatory, folks, though I hope it's helpful for those confused about the wide variety of digitally-distributed sequential art. Those looking to buy digital comics might be interested to read the earlier review of Star Wars comics for the iPhone.

Didn't have room in the article to give a blow-by-blow review of the differences between the Spider-Woman comic and motion comic versions, but there are some interesting things to note, while I'm on the subject.

There's a montage about two-thirds of the way through Spider-Woman #1 where Jessica Drew reminisces about her origins. The motion comic is interesting, in that Alex Maleev's art is replaced with that of other artists, from previous Spider-Woman comics. On the other hand, the original comic contains some extra narration, giving added background for the uninitiated, which the motion comic leaves out.

So buyers of either version get something special. Though I found the story a bit blah – there wasn't really enough there to get me excited about the upcoming installments.